Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

No Bull From the Big Bull, Volume One, by Varric Tethras, a Humble Storyteller

Excerpt: Sweets to the Sour

Anora never knocked before entering her father's study. Sudden noises startled him; not enough to make him jump or even twitch in any way anybody looking at him could notice, but enough to make him very grumpy. So she always merely opened the door quietly, and allowed her skirts to swish as she walked in so that he could easily identify her approach before she said any word of greeting. She also always let him do the greeting first.

Nobody knew that Loghain Mac Tir had a gentle side better than his daughter, but when you were the daughter of the Hero of River Dane you learned exactly how to handle him to ensure he was always in the best possible mood.

On this occasion, however, it was of no matter, as when she opened the door she discovered that King Maric was there. That in and of itself was not uncommon, though she hadn't realized he'd come to visit Gwaren House. That wasn't uncommon, either, in truth: Maric knew the back entrances and liked to drop in unannounced and as close to unnoticed by the Teyrn's servants as possible. So nothing about this was alarming…

…Except for the fact that her father was on the floor, bent over the desk, apparently in the grip of some powerful seizure. His shoulders shook, his head rolled from side to side, and one foot kicked at the faded cashamin rug spasmodically. All while Good King Maric sat collapsed in the big wingback armchair, laughing, with tears streaming down his face from mirth.

Anora's stunned emotions vacillated between terror for her father's health and rage at the king's merriment until reason reasserted itself. It was almost certain that there were people in the world wicked or spiteful enough to find the picture of Loghain Mac Tir in dire circumstances hilariously funny, but Maric wasn't one of them. Her eyes alighted on a small tray of petits fours on the table and a degree of understanding dawned. Her father did not care for sweets, but…this?

"By the Maker's salty balls, that was ghastly!" Loghain gasped out. Anora repressed her own gasp at the language, which he did not typically use to that strength before her unless he absolutely could not restrain himself. But then, judging by the extremity of their reactions, it was quite possible neither man was yet aware of her presence. She cleared her throat.

Maric opened his streaming eyes, they alighted upon her face, and he collapsed into an even stronger paroxysm of helpless laughter. In truth, he now seemed closer to signs of apoplectic seizure than her father. Loghain pulled himself off his knees and grabbed a decanter of what was supposedly Antivan gin but which Anora was morally certain was Wyvern's Ridge moonshine. The stuff was still illegal, thanks to the number of people who died from drinking it, but she knew her father had found the distill - and the moonshiners - and either cajoled or threatened them into selling only the finished product and not the fore shot, which was what was killing people. He had not made them conform to legal distillery standards, however. She sniffed at her father's rare breech from the word of law and order but understood the decision - it was damned good liquor.

Loghain chased the taste of sweetcake out of his mouth with the potent potable and seemed to settle. Maric's fit passed as well, and he wiped his face with a monogrammed handkerchief that appeared to be the one Anora herself had embroidered for him years ago when her mother first began to teach her needlework. A drunken-looking M beside a rigidly upright T, both over top of a boldly-stitched KING (the G looked a lot like a broken O) because, as she had told her mother at the time, there were many men in Ferelden with the initials MT, and she didn't want anyone to mistake the King's handkerchief for theirs. Seeing it again after so long was rather touching, and she wasn't easily touched by such sentiments.

"Hello, my dear. Sorry you had to see that," Maric said, once he'd calmed enough to speak. "One doesn't expect a reaction quite so severe when one coaxes a friend into trying a petit four."

"Blackmails, you mean," her father growled.

Anora eyed the little cakes suspiciously. They appeared to be ordinary chocolate cakes, perhaps a bit darker and so just a bit richer than usual. That didn't sufficiently explain why her father appeared to be having uncontrolled spasms from the flavor. There was a ripe red raspberry on top of each - perhaps he had some aversion to them? There was a young man in Gwaren who couldn't eat shellfish without breaking out in the most terrible hives and swelling, which was quite the trial since shellfish was a major part of the native diet. But she'd known her father to eat raspberries in the past - the only sweet things he'd eat were fruits and berries, and only occasionally - so that didn't make a lot of sense, either.

"Might I…try one?" Anora said, with more hesitation than she'd intended to show. She had never had a bad reaction to any food, and she had a far greater fondness for sweets than her sire.

"You won't like it," Loghain predicted. Maric held out the tray.

"By all means, dear. Don't pay any attention to your father - he doesn't know a good thing when he tastes it."

Anora picked up one of the cakes and bit into it, taking about half of the petite treat into her mouth. The hidden center of raspberry jelly touched her tongue, mingled with the heady sweetness of the indeed intensely rich chocolate, and the unexpected explosion of flavor rocked her. She didn't fall to the floor, but her eyes fluttered, her mouth twisted, her head jerked spasmodically, and for some reason her left leg stomped up and down on the floor very hard several times before she regained control of her physical reactions. It wasn't as severe as her father had experienced, perhaps, but she understood now exactly how he'd ended up on his knees bent over the desk.

"Sweet mother mine, that is ghastly," she said, almost out of breath.

"What? Not you, too! Maker save you, child - you are your father's daughter," King Maric cried out in what sounded like genuine dismay tinged with his usual humor. He popped a petit four into his mouth entire and chewed with no apparent ill effects. Once he'd swallowed it he said, "Don't take this the wrong way, my girl - but after having seen your father eat roasted rat, and worse, at times during the Rebellion or just at the Gwaren feast day celebrations, watching his reaction to a simple dessert has led me to the conclusion that he is the single most bass-ackward man in Ferelden. Possibly all of Thedas."

"You didn't come here, Maric, just to torture my daughter and I with revolting food," Loghain said.

"Well, torturing you was never the intention," Maric said, and sat back down comfortably, "but actually I did just come here with no particular motive in mind, except to spend an hour or so with two of my favorite people before I set sail in the morning."

"I still say I should be going with you," Loghain said.

"Nonsense - someone has to run the country."

"There are plenty of people who'd be more than happy to do that. Your son and my daughter, for instance."

Anora had heard her father try to argue King Maric into taking him along on this embassy voyage before, but that last sentence perked her interest. She wouldn't at all mind a chance to test her political muscles out from under the steely gaze of her father. She was never going to know whether she was at all effective at the game until she could be sure people weren't merely being intimidated into complicity by those cold blue eyes, after all. "Father would be excellent protection, Your Majesty," she said, "and you do always seem to enjoy each others' company."

Maric chuckled. "Look out, Loghain: your daughter seems quite eager to be rid of you. I'd be scared, were I you."

Loghain stretched and settled himself into a chair. "I'd be eager to be rid of me, too, if I had to live with me underfoot all the time. Now that wiser heads have spoken, you've got to see I should go with you, right?"

Maric shook his head. "I'm sorry, my friend - Anora is correct, of course, you would be excellent protection and great company, and I'm certain that between them she and Cailan could manage Ferelden very nicely. But sea travel is dangerous. Ferelden can't risk losing both of us at a blow."

"Then you should stay and I should go, if its as dangerous as all that," Loghain said. Maric's response was a hearty guffaw.

"Oh, I'd pay good money to see what sort of mess you'd make of a diplomatic mission like this, but Ferelden can't afford the price, I'm afraid. No, my friend, it must be me and not thee. Now, if you don't mind, I'd rather we spoke no more of the matter. You, I remember, were quite happy the one time we put out to sea together on the way to West Hill - running all over the ship and even climbing into the rigging, unless I imagined that part. But I was not at all fond of that or any other sea voyage I've been forced to make, and I should like very much to stop thinking about walking up that gangplank tomorrow."

Loghain nodded thoughtfully and poured a bit more "Antivan gin" into his glass, then poured two more glasses of the stuff. He handed one to Maric and the other to Anora, and raised his own. "Cheers, then," he said.

Maric smiled and tipped his glass in salute. "Cheers." The three of them sipped their drinks, and Maric gagged on his. "Maker's breath, what distillery did this come from? I've never tasted Antivan gin like that before."

Loghain looked at his daughter from over the rim of his glass and said, "And he calls our tastes bass-ackwards."

The evening ended on a light note, with two old friends - one so merry, the other so taciturn - who'd known each other well enough and long enough to get each other's humor despite how differently they approached it. Anora wasn't exactly on the inside of all of their inside jokes, but she didn't feel excluded in the slightest. It was a very pleasant interlude, and a fond memory to turn to in the dark days to come. When it was time for King Maric to return to the palace Loghain returned to his bottomless pile of petitions and request-for-hearings and Maric stood and offered Anora his arm.

"See an old man to the door, my dear?" he asked.

She smiled, stood, and slipped her arm through his. "Your Majesty, you're not old in the slightest."

"Oh, but I am, though. Older than Loghain, in fact, though your father has oft been mistaken for mine," he said, and preened his golden hair for comic effect. Anora chuckled politely at the joke, but she wouldn't have been at all surprised if it were true. Her father wasn't "old," either, but he often seemed very much older than the King.

Maric peered down at her with a strange expression on his face, intent and wondering. "I've been meaning to ask you, my dear, and I do hope you won't take offense to the question: how would you react if your father were ever to remarry? To someone much younger than he? Younger even than you, perhaps?"

Anora's steps slowed as she pondered the possible meanings and motives behind the not-quite-innocent question. Did the King know something she hadn't been told as yet, or was this question a blind for something else entirely? He'd been a widower for quite some time now, after all, much longer than her father had, and there were many in the kingdom who wanted very much to see the King remarried. Anora was betrothed to his son, of course, but it wouldn't be the first time an unwed king took his heir's intended as his own. Anora was something of an idealist, like her father, but like her father she was also a staunch realist - a combination that was not at all impossible as some believed, merely intensely uncomfortable. She decided to assume the King was aware of some plan or proposal regarding her father and a younger lady of court to which she herself was not yet privy, since she was fond of the King but did not wish to have to be fond of him in quite that way.

"That would, I suppose, depend upon the lady to whom he wed, Your Majesty, and whether or not they might be happy together," she said cautiously. "I dare say he is in need of companionship, but I wouldn't like it to be of an inappropriate nature."

King Maric chuckled and slipped an arm around her shoulders for a sidearm hug. "You have a politician's mind, my dear - must have gotten it from your mother, I suppose. Still, if it were a good match, it truly wouldn't make you upset? It hasn't been all that long since your mother passed, not in terms of grieving one's mother. I still grieve mine, and I think your father would say the same if you asked."

Yes, this definitely sounded as though the King were aware of plans for her father to marry. Something of a relief, although her eyes now pricked with tears at the thought of her mother. She took out her own handkerchief and dabbed them away.

"I grieve, of course. And I suppose, as you say, I always shall. But father is still alive, and young and healthy enough to expect to live a long time after. I certainly don't wish him to spend the rest of his days alone and lonely. If he had a chance again for love I would want him to take it, no matter who she was. I would prefer, however, that he not be forced into an uncomfortable marriage of politics. That would not be good for him or for the lady he wed."

"Now there's a bit of the old Mac Tir policy of impolitic and occasionally brutal honesty. I hope, however, that you do not look upon your own impending vows as 'an uncomfortable marriage of politics?'"

Impolitic and occasionally brutal honesty worked for one Mac Tir but probably not so well for the other. Anora looked the King in the eye and told only half the truth. "Cailan is a dear, and I look forward to the day we marry."

It worked. The King's worried expression changed into a sunny smile, and he reached out to touch her cheek. "Glad to hear it, my dear. And never fear: I won't allow anything like a soulless political marriage to darken your father's future. There is a young lady I think might - might - be exactly what he needs to cheer and distract him, and I think he might - might - be good for her as well, but I will be certain that I am entirely sure of both points before I allow anything to move forward. She is, after all, still quite young. The good thing is that she'll get over being 'quite young' much faster than Loghain will get over being 'slightly old,' and come to think of it that's also the pity. Why must our children grow so fast?"

His Majesty didn't seem to expect an answer to that question, so Anora didn't bother to look for one. She said farewell and good night to the King at the door, and the next morning she and her father were among the assembled at the docks to see him off on his long and dreaded voyage. Anora wasn't sure whether it was her imagination or not, but he already looked a bit green in the face just from standing on the pier beside the great ship.

Maric shook Loghain's hand last before boarding the Demelza. "Goodbye, my friend," he said. Characteristically, her father did not return the farewell or wish the King a safe journey; he merely nodded and gave a slight grunt. Anora noticed, however, that he seemed a bit reluctant to relinquish his grip on the King's hand. Finally, and with some apparent effort, he loosed his fingers their tight grasp. Maric put a hand on Cailan's shoulder and gave Anora a final brave smile, and then he turned and walked up the gangplank. No one standing on the docks that day ever saw him again.

Thoughts of the mystery girl to whom King Maric believed her father ought possibly wed were pushed forever from Anora's mind when the news reached Denerim that the Demelza had vanished without a trace. The kingdom was thrown into an instant panic and a special Landsmeet was called immediately. The panic was not lessened in the slightest when at that Landsmeet it was proposed that Bryce Cousland, and not Cailan Theirin, take the throne now when it seemed so clear to everyone except her father, perhaps, that King Maric was dead and gone forever. Cailan wasn't ready for the throne, that was the argument put forth by Cousland's supporters, and Anora recognized the truth in that even as she resented it. Her father recognized it, too, but his reasons for opposing Cousland's claim so vehemently - with a mad light of pure rage in his eyes and spittle-flecked curses, in fact - boiled down to far more than knowing that Anora was ready even if Cailan never was. He refused to accept even the possibility that Maric was dead. No wreckage had been found; the ship simply hadn't made port where she was expected to. He would go and look for the damned thing - and the damned King - himself, personally, and drag him back by the scruff of the neck if it came to that. Or kill every bastard who stood between him and the commission of his duty to bring the King back alive, if that was the situation. He would not bring him back to a nation ruled in his absence by anyone other than his own son, and he'd beat the stuffing out of Bryce Cousland or any other fool who tried to take Maric's throne away. Politically inapposite, perhaps, but support for the tradition of the Theirin bloodline was stronger than fears for Cailan's unsuitability, and there were some few who agreed with Loghain's assessment that it was too early to say Maric was gone forever.

And so Cailan was crowned, by an uncomfortably narrow vote, and in a month's time - rushed because Loghain could not be detained longer from setting out on his search, even though he probably should have had longer than that just to prepare for the voyage - Anora and Cailan were wed. Loghain set off to find Maric almost before the wedding toasts were finished, and while he sent back word occasionally of his frustratingly fruitless mission she did not see him again for two years. Not a particularly long time, perhaps, in comparison to forever, but long enough for her to have learned a few things in his absence: one; she had a taste and an aptitude for rule: two; Cailan had no interest in developing a taste or aptitude for rule, at least the workaday nature of it: three; Cailan had an interest and a taste for a lot of other things, few of which she could approve of. Perhaps it was his grief, but in his father's absence the young King seemed to have become amazingly self-centered. Or maybe he'd always been so, and she simply hadn't noticed thanks to the way he was always smiling and kind to everyone. That much at least didn't change. She resigned herself to taking the lead in the business side of their marriage and the back seat in every other aspect. She only hoped, when her father returned, that word of some of Cailan's "adventures" never reached his ears, or he'd surely murder him.

If her father returned. She didn't like to admit how worried she was about the possibility he would become as lost as poor King Maric. And her guilt, when she recalled how she'd actually encouraged the King to take her father along with him just so she could see what it was like to rule without his shoulders to stand on! She would never have wished to take the throne in such a way as this, but she offered thanks to the Maker and his blessed Bride that it was Maric who was gone and not her own father, despite the fact that, too, gave her a prickle of conscience. She was simply not ready to say that forever goodbye.

She learned one other thing in the two years Loghain searched the seas and islands and coasts for word or sign of the lost King: she learned to eat fruit-filled chocolate cakes without reaction. It might not seem tremendously important, but as Queen she could never be certain that some visiting dignitary or head of state would not offer her something traditional and cloying and her violent spasms could create an unfortunate diplomatic incident. Eventually she could eat even the sweetest, richest foods without causing a scene, but her father was right about one thing: she never did learn to like it.